Page F our ARMOUR TECH NEWS Tuesday, February l3, [934. ifycie Pictures to" Be Tellers Today (Continued from page 1) individual photos, the management of the Cycle requests that students have their picture taken but once at school. No charge, is to be made. The schedule ’l'or the individual photos is as follows Thursday, February 15th 9:00 to 10:00 Junior Class Ofl’icers Sophomore Class Ofl'ieers Freshman Class Officers Senior Social Committee Junior Social Committee Sophmore Social Committee Freshman Social Committee 10:00 to 11:00 Cycle Stall Engineer Staff Tech News Stall 11:00 to 12:00 . S. M. E. Officers . I. E. E. Officers . S. E. Officers . I. Ch. E. Officers . P. E. S. Officers A. T. M. C. Officers n>g>> 1 :00 to 2:00 ,Tau Beta. Pi Sphinx Phi Lambda Upsilon 2:00 to 3:00 Eta Kappa Nu Chi Epsilon Salamander Pi Nu Epsilon 3 :00 to 4 :00 Pl Tau Sigma Alpha Chi Sigma Friday, February 16th 8:30 to 10:00 Phi Pl Phi 10:00 to 1100 Rho Delta Rho Sigma Alpha Mu Kappa Delta Epsilon 11:00 to 12:00 Delta Tau Delta 1:00 to 3:00 Phi Kappa Sigma Theta Xi . 3:00 to 4 :00 Triangle 4:00 to 5:00 Beta Psi Pictures of the faculty members will be taken at school, Monday and Tuesday, February 19 and 20. The room will be announced later. [reels tonne rail—l Why professors fail to be real in- tellectual leaders of American youth is told in an anonymous article entitled “Confessions of a College Teacher" in Scribner‘s. When he entered the teaching pro- fession as a young idealist burning with the desire to make students up» preciate the beauties of English liter— ature, the professor making the con— fession was shocked to find on exami— nation of test papers written in his class that “Hamlet was the son of King Lear,” that “Wyatt and Surrey did not write poetry, they wrote son- , ets,” and that Coleridge wrote a beautiful poem called “Cube the 7) He tried again and again to find some evidences of intelligence in his students but finally had to give up. He then became hardboiled and de- cided that if he could not teach stu- dents anything he at least would make them uncomfortable. But he gave this up when the dean told him he would have to resign because no one would enroll in his classes. So he started giving every one “A’s” and became the most popular teacher on the campus. This professor’s experience was un- fortunate, but he fails entirely to give the student’s viewpoint. Each year hundreds of bright stu- dents enter college. They are intel- lectually eager, but gradually their interest in learning is killed. They must take work that they don’t want in order to fill requirements. They must bear lectures that professors dislike to give and that students hate to hear. oftentimes they must listen to old men completely out of touch with life who have nothing but drivel and dull facts and theories to feed young curiosity. f time spent in the classroom is wasted, the professor is equally at fault with the dumb students. And- if there is nothing that can be done about it, as the Scribner’s author in- timates, we might as well not have colleges—«Oklahoma Daily. Sl'llllhlll'l' ll/lllfillllfifi Editm"s Note: This column is in- tended to contain such original, stu- dent literary effort as is deemed worthy of recognition. in, this manner and of genuine iniw'est lo the student body. MATHEMATICAL FRICTION I have in mind a most uncomfort- able picture of a small schoolboy, in sixth grade or so, perspiring, scratch- ing his head, and appearing, in gen- eral, to be greatly displeased with himself. And as for his poor “teach- cr”!—I can see her wearing the blackboard thin, trying her level best to tell the little follow that there are two pints in a quart and not i'our. It's rather hard to understand why she doesn’t say to herself: “Oh well, he’s just a little dummy, anyway, and, when he gets to buying his own milk and cream, he’ll get the idea only too well." Naturally, that isn’t what she does do, but a little reflec- tion will show that that, perhaps, 5 just what she should do. Mr. Pupil imagines he is to blame, and Miss Instructress, who is not a mathematician, has a luming sue. picion that the fault lies with her. Now as a matter of cold fact neither should be forced to hang his head in shame. That there are 272 and 1A. square feet in a square rod is so posi- tively outrageous that even the most conservative amongr us believe that a “new deal" is long: overdue some— where nlong the line. There is no rea- son why we shouli. be forced to measure the heights of our proud building, the family hack—yard (length and width), using as a stand- ard one of the pedal extremities of King; George, a toe now long since rotted away, and consequently use- less. Let us look for just a moment at the gallon, or better still a fraction of it. How many cubic inches in a quart? Quickly now! Fifty-seven and three quarters cubic inches is the right answer but I had the figures in front of me. There are of course many other such sore points in our British system. To correct all of them would be no simple matter. The com fusion occasioned by such a switch would be impossible to withstand; something like the hubbub at the Tower of Babel. There is one unfortunate flaw in our mathematics which is not usual— ly mentioned in a discourse of this kind. It crept in this way: A cave man, call him Ug, happened one day to think of his fingers in a most ab~ stract way. He began to associate them with numbers. The thumb was one, the index linger two, the middle finger three, and so forth. For all fingers over ten, grunt in disgust and start over again. The idea that no fingers at all would be zero arrived several thousands of years later; but the essential idea. lies in the fact that Ug‘ in his intele liecnt ignorance bequeathed us “ten" as a base for our number system. Al- most any other digit (digit means figure) would have been better. In fact it would have been advisable to have chosen such a number as 36, with many factors, thus avoiding such esthetically incorrect forms as Bill/30$. 0n the other hand, no true mathematician would ever ob- ject to the number 17 as a base be- cause of the fact that it is a prime, and as such would make unique those functions of 17 which correspond to the functions of 10 which we call decimals. That is, 0.25 would not also mean 5/20 as well as meaning 1/1. Another inconsistency inherent in our decimal system is its incompati— bility with our method of measuring arcs and angles. Of course, no one is to blame for the transcendental nature of a radian, but certainly it is fully to have a circle divided in 300 parts, or degrees, while the cir- cumference is measured in centi- meters, or, what is worse, in inches. It is obvious by this time that we are, almost without our realizing it, in- creasing tremendously the difficulties of mathematical computation. Now 1 am no idealist, and I can see the immense, practically insur— mountable, obstacles which the sub. stituiion of such a totally different (and highly theoretical) system would involve. Yet this method is not whol- ly without merit. I refer to a totally rectified mathematical number se- quence of, say, base 36, having 360 degrees in a circle, as at present, and possessing other logical features, all of which would follow quite natural- ly. To illustrate, centimeters would have to be discarded, but in their place would come other arbitrary units of length and volume and weight, even more satisfactorily re- lated and interrelated than those of the metric system. And you, reader, probably wonder, as I have intimated before, and pro- viding- you have read this far, how such a device could ever be given (‘inllicted upon”, you would say!) this world of ours. At this point I should like to recall the memory of the pcrspiring little boy of whom I talked before. Suppose he were taught, *i‘l'om the very bexrinninu, the principles of the “base 30 number How ereYQlllli. nerves? TRY THIS TEST Tilt. S’l‘hhlill Sliillllil. Well, we hope that all the profs did right by the :l'oolish l'reshies, and the silly sophs, and the jovial juniors, and the serious seniors. And now that, all the bad news has been digested, the chorus of "who's afraid of the big bad prof" can start all over again. We report with regret that the famous triangle of Bill (Pipnqueul) Hoyer, Muriel, and Herb Kreismon sys em.” Certainly he would experi- ence no more difficulty with it than the horrible hodgepodge with which we now confront him. He would be able, assuming average ability, to solve problems of a more complex nature than other children using; the combined decimal and British system of measurement. Fractions would lose most of their terrors. Trigonom‘ etry would scarcely need be a sepa- rate hranch of mathematics. And there are numerous other advantages which need not be mentioned here. At this point the reader will prob- ably burst out ol.’ his chair and yell, “Yes, but how in the name of hell could the little lunk-head ever buy a peek of potatoes?” And I, being ex- ceedingly opposed to profanity of any kind, would feel unduly om— barrassed and answer, blushingly. “Well, I don’t know, I guess you’d have to educate the grocer." G. F. has been disrupted. The reason is that another dame, by name, June, has thrown her hat into the ring, er, we mean triangle. As far as we know the medal for the prize honor of the est-semester goes to Earl Kraft, who dumped his partner Kuhlc’s iso—butyl-amyl or butyl~iso~amyl or what have you into the chem. lab. sink (where it probab- ly belonged anyway). Well, all’s well that ends well. Now that there its a new formation in Social Science class, we can ex- pect some pretty puss combinations from POLKO to HOYER to VJOJ- TASlK. After one lecture in chem. engi~ nearing the seniors have decided that ”Did you ever see a dream walking” would be a nifty title for a play in which J. Schommer plays the leading- role. PROF. RICHARDSON wishes us to publicly state that while he might admit a. faint resemblance to mat of BILL FLEIG’S portrait of him, he absolutely and irrevocably refuses to recognize the big black moustache. CHARLIE NASH goes for colors in a big way. First it’s pink chalk and now a rod lantern is all the rage. Famous lash—or first—words: "Professor how could you." Sed PROF. DAVIS one wintry morn: “Stew bad the professors can’t generate enough hot air to keep the students warm.” so“ - are y 3-“... dangled nerves melee you throw away vital energy :With arms hanging straight at your sides—stand- ing in erect position—rise on your toes as high as possible. See how long you can maintain this posi« tion without teetering or losing your balance. Average time is one minute. Irving Juice (Camel smaller), famous Olympic skating champion, can maintain the position 10 minutes. "illllll lllll J angled nerves are like a leak in your reserve of energy. And if you could count the units of en— ergy a normally high~strung person wastes each dayu-the re- sult would astonish you. So if you find yourself drum- ming on your desk or table—«or EOSTLZER T034 6603 indulging in any other nervous habits-«start protecting your nerves. Get enough sleepwfresh air. Make Camels your cigarette. You can smokeas many Camels as you want. Their costlier tobuco cos never jungle your nerves. Camels are made from finer, MORE EXPENSKVE TOBACCOS than any other popular brand of cigarettes! smears Afilfi learns dig ligflltil WAlhllTMe ”Weld“? NEWER $5? QM hidflhlld Ndl’d‘iflddl CAMEL CARAVAN fcafiuring Glen Gray’s CASA LOIWA Orchestra and other Headliners Every Tuesday and? Thumm'ey at 10 I’. M., E.3.T.w—-9 R. 1%., (5.5. 31—8 P. M.. M.S.T.m7 P. 13%, RS. 31, over l/l'fllBC-Columba'u Network